Janet Yellen's appeal goes mainstream

Janet Yellen’s confirmation as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve is resonating beyond Washington and financial centers, in corners of culture and media where central bankers don’t often tread.

She’s been featured in a widely aired Microsoft commercial — alongside Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai, the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and others — for having “shattered the glass ceiling.”

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“Huge news. Huge!” the lead of an online Glamour article exclaimed. “It’s about time,” Cosmo tweeted.

Upworthy, a popular media site that draws much of its traffic from content readers share on Facebook and Twitter, ran a photo of Yellen next to previous male Fed presidents above the banner: “FINALLY.”

The increased focus on Yellen’s groundbreaking chairmanship reflects both the growing attention that the central bank has received in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the continuing tensions over whether the world of finance — both in and out of government — remains too much of a boys club.

“In a different year, if there were two men up for it, yeah, we probably would have let that pass,” said Marie Claire news editor Kayla Webley, who earlier this month wrote an article under the headline “Cheers to Janet Yellen, the Most Powerful Woman in the World.” “I think that any time a woman puts another chip in the glass ceiling, it’s worth celebrating.”

And it’s the specific chip that Yellen is putting in the glass ceiling that is bringing such attention to her Fed confirmation.

“When has Glamour been interested in the Fed chair?” said Theda Skocpol, a government and sociology professor at Harvard who has in the past been critical of the university’s former president, Larry Summers, a candidate for the Fed job alongside Yellen. “What we’re seeing in American politics over the last few years is the Fed is suddenly getting a lot more popular attention. That was true before Janet Yellen was nominated.”

Women have made significant headway at the highest levels of government in recent years. There are currently three women serving on the Supreme Court and the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security have been led by women, as have some financial regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

And much of the current buzz about the 2016 presidential race is about Hillary Clinton as the clear front-runner to be the Democratic nominee.

But the top jobs in economics and finance, including at the Treasury Department and the Fed, have been harder to crack, and women who have spent their careers in these professions hope that the spotlight on Yellen will help continue to shake up a traditionally male-dominated profession.

“Economics is still, even at the educational level, not equally male and female,” Christina Romer, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Barack Obama, said in an interview. “So to have a high profile woman succeed in such an incredible way surely makes a lot more of our daughters say, ‘Gee, maybe I should study economics.’”

Sheila Bair, a former chairwoman of FDIC, said Yellen’s story also highlights the issue of how spouses can support each other in the pursuit of their career goals.

In a recent interview with Time magazine after her Jan. 6 confirmation, Yellen referred to her husband, George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, as her biggest fan and supporter. She pointed out that Akerlof was very willing to change their son’s diapers and wash the dishes to allow his wife to focus on her career.

“I love the fact that she gives her husband so much credit,” Bair said. “There’s so much debate now about whether the woman can have it all and she put her finger on it — a supportive spouse is really the key here.”

Others were thrilled that, given the stature of the Fed job, Yellen will for years be in the public view and serve as an example to women who aspire to succeed in her field.

“The fact that she’s a woman, that’s seen as being a real positive — that we’re now looking at the other half of the talent pool,” said Barbara Byrne, the vice chairwoman of investment banking at Barclays. “Whoever is in that seat has tremendous authority, is accorded tremendous respect and has tremendous influence over economic policy.”